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Trailer of Lunch Meat Traded for Crack

Swapping a tractor-trailer filled with lunch meat for some crack cocaine will get you in trouble in Shelby County.

Arkansas truck driver Larry Ron Bowen was sentenced to one year of inpatient drug treatment and six years of probation on Monday. He pleaded guilty in Criminal Court Friday to theft of over $60,000, including more than $50,000 of lunch meat.

Bowen was supposed to deliver the load of meat last June to destinations in Alabama and Florida. The meat never showed up.

So, the company used the truck’s GPS and found it at a service station at Lamar and Winchester. Gone was the truck’s refrigerated trailer. The truck’s tires had been replaced with cheaper ones.

But officers found Bowen, sitting near the truck and eating a lunch meat sandwich.

Bowen finally admitted that he was the driver of the truck. He then led them to the trailer hidden in a storage facility nearby. About a third of the shipment was missing.

Bowen said he had stopped at the station three days earlier and “inadvertently” traded the trailer and the lunch meat to two men for crack cocaine.

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